12/11/2015

When food and perfumes come together

In the back of our mind we always know food and scents are closely connected. Every time before we try a new type of food or an unknown dish we are probably going to smell it first. Most of the food's taste comes from its smell and our delicate senses can recognise the notes easily. Essentially, scents are what creates the taste. Also, perfumes are much more than a beauty product. You know how when you smell a perfume it can remind you of million things, childhood memories, fields of grass, an old perfume your Grandmother wore? Fragrances are just magical that way. Perfumers discovered a long time ago that certain food smells can be used in fragrance production. Caramel, chocolate, ginger, banana, orange, even bread, all of these, and many other smells are used in perfume making. And, let's face it, today most of the food we are eating contains additives that create the taste.

One thing is certain, food and scents always go hand in hand. It's easily to trick the brain and most of the scents we are used to are actually brought to us by the perfume industry. Like the leather smell in a new car or bread and chocolate smells some supermarkets are using to attract more customers. While all the other senses have to be processed first so we could be aware of the sensation, the sense of smell is wired to the brain and its limbic system, the part that controls emotions. This is why it is so easily for smells to trigger emotions.

The connection between food and perfumes is perhaps the most interesting, and couple of years ago it lead to the creation of olfactory dinners, where every dish is inspired by a certain perfume and chefs try to mimic those scents by combining different ingredients. This is actually the tradition long known to human kind. Ancient Roman author Aelian wrote how ancient Greeks mixed wine with perfume on some occasions, while in ancient Egypt they would lit cones infused with perfume during the meals. With the knowledge and technology we have today, we can dissect pretty much any scent to it's particles. For example, when you mix lime, vanilla, clove and cinnamon together you'll get the exact taste of Coke. Now, that's something to think about.

Although we know a lot about scents, olfactory dinners are still new, exciting and unexplored things. Last Friday at Metropoliten perfumery we had a chance to try dishes inspired by perfumes. These dishes weren't the direct interpretation of certain perfumes, instead they contained same notes as perfumes ''served'' next to them. Food was divided into seven categories (as you can see in the photos). Also we tried an eatable scent based on Escentric 3 perfume by Escentric Molecules. The guest of Metropoliten perfumery for the evening was Juraj Sotošek-Rihtarec, author of the BL'eauOG and the perfume expert.

6) Chocolate The star of the evening (by the choice of bloggers at least) was a chocolade mouse served next to the pumpkine dip. Pefrumes with chocolate notes were Parfum d'Empire Equistrius, Frapin 1697 and Nasomatto Pardon.

7) Konjak, whiskey, gin Of course, apropriate drinks were served and L'Artisan Skin on Skin, Penhalgion's Juniper Sling and Frapin perfumes were featured for this chategory.

This was a truly unique evning and everyone at Metropoliten did an amazing job at making it happen.

What do you think? How do you like the idea of mixing perfumes and food?